Brands2Life interviews:

Emily Howell, Senior PR Manager, Yonder, the credit card fintech specialising in reward points

With Yonder expanding its offering beyond London to other parts of the UK, how have you adapted communications strategy to resonate with new regional audiences?

Understanding the community you’re speaking to is super important. We know our rewards proposition can resonate with people across the country, but that looks different for everyone, so for local audiences it’s important that we tailor that message to make sure we’re offering relevant and valuable benefits to their lives. It’s pretty ignorant to assume that just because a product and strategy works in London, it’s going to be equally successful elsewhere in the UK without that deeper level of understanding.

We did a lot of user research before launching outside of London to dig into the social behaviours and needs of residents in other cities, which helped guide how we launched the product. But once isn’t enough – we need to keep talking to members and local communities to keep those insights fresh and help shape our future comms.

How do you navigate the internal challenges of convincing the business that you need to move away from product communications and onto issue or theme-based communication strategies to engage your audiences even more?

Product and brand communications are both so important. Our main priority for the first year or so was largely product-led – creating a base level of awareness by showing up in the places where we know people will be shopping around for a new credit product. But now that foundation is there, it’s the natural next step for us to be focusing on bigger awareness-driving plays. It’s not really been a case of needing to convince the business – we all agree that it’s the next step towards much broader brand recognition!

Ultimately, we know that a credit card is a considered purchase and it’s unlikely that the majority of people who hear about us through a brand campaign will be ready there and then to open an account. But as we keep showing up and become a more familiar name, when they are ready to explore us and decide to do some more digging, the comms work we do around product education is already there to help cement their trust in us and what we’re all about.

Yonder is challenging incumbents that have built significant brand loyalty. How does your communication strategy address and challenge the inherent trust that consumers place in established brands?

Trust is so important, especially as a financial service. Without it you’re not going to succeed, but it’s really hard to build as a new fintech.
From a comms perspective, for us it’s about highlighting how we solve the pain points that have become the norm for customers of incumbent products. It’s about sowing a seed in the minds of those customers – that there’s another way and it doesn’t need to be so hard – with a British-ness that audiences can relate to. And then when they do decide to join us, we need to make sure that the product they encounter lives up to the reputation of course!

We’re lucky to have a lot of brand love among our members too who really help us spread the word among their friends through referrals and leave us great reviews on TrustPilot. Those customer viewpoints often help to persuade those who might be on the fence about us as a new brand!

Have you seen any communication tactics from brands, whether that be partners, competitors or other industries that you admire?

It’s probably a bit of an obvious one but the ‘No Bounty’ Celebrations tubs campaign a year or so ago was so beautifully simple. It’s proof that you don’t need a big budget to get massive amounts of value from a PR campaign, particularly when you play on a debate that everyone can relate to and have an opinion on. The Heinz Carbonara launch a couple of months ago that ‘had Italians in uproar’ was in a similar vein that I enjoyed too – I love some classic British self-deprecating energy.

Those examples obviously operate in very different sectors to fintech and credit cards, but I think they’re excellent and inspirational nonetheless!

What are the key ingredients for a good agency-client relationship?

Just like in fintech, the relationship is never going to flourish without trust and honesty from the get-go. Mutual respect is needed from both sides – things will always go wrong but owning them as a team and focusing on what can be learned from them is always better than a blame game in my opinion.

Collaboration is massive too – an agency should feel like an extension of a brand’s team, and that relationship has to be nurtured. It’s a two-way street; agencies need to help clients achieve their goals, and clients need to help them to get there.

And lastly, an agency and client will likely go through some stressful moments and occasional late nights or weekend work together, so good chemistry is a must! I always tend to find the more solid the relationship, the better the output.